Health

In an ironic, but perhaps unplanned turn of events, this year's Back Up Your Birth Control Day of Action comes the day after the premiere

It is with a heavy heart and an angry mind, that I have raised and donated my last dollar for Komen.

Two people I know have had run-ins with HPV, the Human Papilloma Virus. One was a man my age that got a mouth cancer which was viral in origin.

Tomorrow, Mississippi will vote on Initiative 26 and decide whether to dramatically alter their state constitution with the addition of the words:

The subject of a woman’s body, even in its most intimate functions, was not taboo in the orthodox Jewish world of my upbringing.

1. Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati, OH in 1867. Like many German Jews, her parents had emigrated from Europe soon after the revolutions of 1848.

I first "met" Barbara Seamen through my dissertation research. Reading her books about women’s health and her personal archives, I encountered a woman who was prescient, outspoken, and brave. At a time when most feminists celebrated the wonders of the Pill, which freed sex from reproduction, Seaman investigated its costs to women’s health, publishing her first book, The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill, in 1969.

Today is the 35^th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion. In commemoration, I’ve been reading Behind Every Choice is a Story, by Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood – a book that I’ve been meaning to read for a while.

I’ve never met Lorraine Rothman, a women’s health activist and inventor of the Del’Em menstrual extraction kit. But I came to know her work through my dissertation research, and so I was deeply saddened to hear that she is dying.

With the flowering of autumn Jewish holidays consuming our attention, it’s unlikely that many of us have tuned into September as  National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. I wasn’t aware of it either until I listened to NPR yesterday for the first time in several days. Ovarian cancer—often called the “silent killer”—seems to garner less attention than breast cancer whose awareness month is assigned to October, awash with pink ribbons, walks, fundraisers, and other benefits.